Google announced a Firefox plugin on its blog which provides the following ’syncing’ functionality:
“Google Browser Sync unifies your bookmarks, history, saved passwords, and persistent cookies across all the computers where you install it. It also remembers which tabs and windows you had open when you last closed any of your browsers and gives you a chance to reopen them.”
I think it is important to make life easy for the user. How difficult is it for us to remember websites we visited (and would like to visit again) and the usernames and passwords to access some webtools and services? On top of that there’s the added complexity of information that you may have saved on one computer that does not reside on the other.
I laud Google because they are definitely following their credo, but as investing 101 tells us, diversity, diversify, diversify. It scares me to think that ALL or a vast majority of my online persona is already captured by Google when it stores my search results (I have a Google account), but to add in passwords, cookies and the like, it makes me nervous. Not that Google has any malicious motives, but at the end of the day it is my responsibility to protect myself, not Google’s.
I already enjoy using FoxMarks, a utility for syncing my bookmarks. In fact, I’ve raved about it here. However, it’s one thing to save bookmarks and it’s quite another to save usernames, passwords, and other identifying information.
Am I just being too “big brother” paranoid? What are your thoughts?
Tags: [Google, Google Sync, Firefox, security, privacy, PIM, Partial Recall, Infocloud]
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